An interview with Jonathan GPT Swift

 

Midjourney image below of Jonathan Swift in podcasting studio, via Carlos Orchoa. 

Tyler Cowen, in his "Conversations With Tyler" podcast series, has interviewed an AI version of Jonathan Swift, one of Robert Anton Wilson's favorite writers, using GPT4.

Here is the blurb for the episode: "GPT Swift discusses his support for the Church of Ireland, his shift from the Whigs to the Tories, and his opposition to William Wood’s copper coinage in Ireland. He also talks about his works, including Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal, and his skepticism of moral and intellectual progress. Swift addresses rumors about his relationship with Esther Johnson and his fascination with scatological themes in his works. He also discusses his early life in England, his intellectual mentor Sir William Temple, and his jovial attitude towards death."

One feature of the interview is that Cowen asks many of the same sorts of questions that he uses in other podcasts, including an "Overrated or underrated" segment:

COWEN: OK, we’re going to play a little game here. I will name a thinker or other item from your time, and you will tell me whether you think it is overrated or underrated.

How about John Donne, overrated or underrated?

SWIFT: I have great respect for John Donne, the metaphysical poet and cleric. Donne’s work is known for its complexity, wit, and innovative use of metaphors. His unique style and approach to poetry have had a lasting influence on English literature. In my opinion, John Donne is not overrated, but rather appropriately rated or even underrated, considering the depth and quality of his work.

An upcoming interview (or 'interview') with Jonathan Swift

While there is work being done on the "longevity" and "space migration" parts of SMI2LE, the Timothy Leary formula for a future that features longer human lifespans, intelligence increase and space migration, it seems to be the intelligence increase part that seems to be advancing rapidly, in the form of artificial intelligence.

Jonathan Swift was one of Robert Anton Wilson's favorite authors. If I remember correctly, when RAW was living in Ireland, he made a point of reading all of Swift's work. 

Now blogger and economics professor Tyler Cowen has announced he plans to interview an AI version of Jonathan Swift as part of his "Conversations with Tyler" interview series. I don't know how well the interview will turn out, but certainly we live in interesting times. 

RAW (and Tyler Cowen) on Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift painting by Charles Jervas

Tyler Cowen at a June 23 post: "Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, some cheap paperback edition.  I did a quick, non-studied reread of this, in prep for the new Cambridge University Press reissue edition due out June 30, which has excellent notes and I will study and reread in more detail.  One of the very best books!  Not only is the story fully engaging and deeply humorous, but it is one of the seminal tracts on progress (largely skeptical), a blistering take on political correctness, wise on the virtues and pitfalls of travel, and one of the first novels to truly engage with science and politics and their interaction.  Straussian throughout.  Swift is one of the very greatest thinkers and writers and his output has held up remarkably well."

Compare with what Robert Anton Wilson wrote in an article on "Brain Books" (reprinted in Beyond Chaos and Beyond, still a bargain at $5 for the Kindle): "Jonathan Swift. All of Gulliver's Travels. There are some anthologies which contain not only this, but a selection of his other writings, too. Swift does a great job of tearing apart conventional ideas about almost everything. He's very, very liberating; almost psychedelic in some passages."

I re-read Gulliver's Travels periodically and always enjoy it. Many years ago, I belonged to a book group in Lawton, Oklahoma; at each meeting we would give each other suggestions on what to read next and agree on the next title. I persuaded everyone to read Gulliver's Travels. I was quite excited to discuss it, but when I showed up at the next meeting, I discovered everyone else had not bothered to finish the book! And of course, I always faithfully read my homework assignments from everyone else.

I could not place the source of the RAW quote cited above until I looked at my copy of Eric Wagner's An Insider's Guide to Robert Anton Wilson. I keep a Kindle copy of my phone; it's handy quite often when I need to look for something. 

Reading 'Gulliver's Travels'

Just finished re-reading Gulliver's Travels. Not sure I'll follow Robert Anton Wilson's example of reading all of Swift's works, but I like Gulliver very much.

I read Gulliver for the first time in the 1980s, when I belonged to a book club for couples back in Oklahoma. We would all agree to read a book and then discuss it the next month. I remember I talked them into reading Gulliver's Travels, and I loved it, and I was very excited looking forward to the discussion. To my chagrin, when we assembled, I discovered nobody else had bothered to finish it. There wasn't much of a discussion.

Re-reading it this time turned inadvertently into an experiment on the best way to read a public domain book if you don't have a dedicated electronic book reader. I started out reading it on my cell phone, in QiOO format. Then I read it on a Web browser, on Google Books. Finally, I finished it as an EPUB downloaded from Project Gutenberg, read on my laptop. That was the best -- big, easy to read type and good bookmarking.

Jonathan Swift: Another footnote to The Earth Will Shake

In part six of The Earth Will Shake, the section entitled The Hanged Man, John Babcock is waiting to find out if the authorities at his school will discover if he is a "sodomite" when he reads a passage from a favorite writer, Jonathan Swift, which begins, "Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse."

Wilson doesn't give a citation, but it turns out the passage came from Section Nine of A Tale of a Tub, which the Wikipedia article says is Swift's "first major prose work."

Years ago, I belonged to a book group in Lawton, Oklahoma, which read books suggested by its members. One meeting was supposed to be devoted to discussing Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which I had suggested. I loved the book and looked forward to the discussion, but when I went to the meeting, I discovered that I was the only person who had bothered to finish it.

Passages of The Earth Will Shake make it clear Wilson loved Swift's writing.